Spring 2009

Enough Already!
Too Many Choices Can Alienate Busy Consumers

Consumers are becoming overwhelmed with too many choices. The seemingly unlimited choices proliferated by manu-facturers is having the unintended con-sequence of buyers being unhappy with the selection they finally do make. Several research studies have shown that the more choices a person has, the less likely they are to be satisfied with the selection they do make.

So why do manufacturers continue to fill store shelves with more and more choices? The product proliferation stems from the fact that many brands are seeing a decline in sales. Searching for a way to boost sagging sales, manufacturers are introducing variations on their core products. Original lemon lime flavor Gatorade not enough to entice you to buy? How about Fruit Punch or Frost Riptide Rush?

Gatorade now offers 23 different drink varieties. The line of Cheerios cereal includes 10 different types. Coke, which hasn’t learned from its New Coke debacle*, comes in 14 different flavors.

Harried consumers, who are rushed for time, want to be able to quickly find their preferred items and move on. As they zip through the store, shoppers look for the visual cues to locate items. “I get the salsa with the green label and the pasta in the yellow box.”

Tropicana found out just how important keeping the same package was when they did a redesign earlier this year. In an effort to update its Tropicana orange juice brand, Pepsi-Co launched a new package design. The long-time orange-with-a-straw-in-it was dumped for a photo of a glass of juice and a new round, orange shaped screw top was added.

Consumers hated the new package. Even worse, they could no longer identify which was the Tropicana package in the sea of orange juice on display. One consumer explained, “Tropicana was always my first choice, but I must have looked at the box for five minutes trying to figure out if it actually was the Tropicana I wanted and not some generic brand.” After months of complaints and flagging sales, Tropicana went back to the old package, but kept the new screw top.

The lesson in all this is that more is not necessarily better. Sears & Roebuck had the right idea when they instituted “good, better and best” item selections in their catalogs. Focus on your core offering and hone your brand message. A testament to this Apple computers, who has nearly doubled its share of the computer market since paring down the number of models it offered from twelve to four.

“Advertising is of the very essence of democracy. An election goes on
every minute of the business day across the counters of hundreds of thousands of stores and shops where the customers state their preferences and determine which manufacturer and which product shall be the leader today, and which shall lead tomorrow.”

— Bruce Barton, Founder of advertising agency
Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO)

* In 1985 Coke reformulated its flagship drink after taste test research showed that consumers preferred the sweeter taste of rival Pepsi. They introduced New Coke to an outcry from loyal Coke drinkers who wanted their drink back. The soft drink giant was forced to bring back “Coke Classic,” which eventually went back to being just Coke once New Coke was pulled
off the shelves.

World Record Marketing

Vying for attention in today’s frenetic market calls for big ideas. Really big ideas. The latest attention-getting marketing ploy is the tying your product into setting a Guinness Book of World Records.

To launch its new ad campaign – “All for fun. Fun for all.” – Carnival Cruise Lines set out to capture not one, but two world’s records. The first record-breaking event was held in Philadelphia, where the cruise line created the world’s largest piñata. The six-story high donkey shaped piñata, which was filled with 8,000 pounds of candy, was the centerpiece of a block party event. A crane with a wrecking ball was used to split open the piñata.

The second event was staged in Texas, where everything is big, including beach balls. Carnival successfully set a world record for the largest beach ball. Two of the giant beach balls, measuring 36 feet in diameter, were dropped from the roof of a building into a crowd of more than 2,500 people.

Earlier this month in Chicago, Illinois, Samsung dreamed up a record-setting stunt for its Cricket cell phone. The company had a massive replica of the phone built. Hailed as the world’s biggest working cell phone, the fifteen foot wide and eleven foot tall phone was used during a promotion in which passersby were able to call or text their friends and family. Despite its QWERTY keyboard, no one's thumbs were aching because the phone was so large you had to walk from button to button and use a step ladder to talk into the phone.

A Game Changer
The New Economy Brings Opportunity

We’ve all seen the statistics that bear out the fact that businesses that continue to advertise during a downturn in the economy recover more quickly and post bigger gains than companies that curtail their marketing efforts. Another aspect of economic uncertainty that rarely gets mention is what a “game changer” turbulent times can be.

Sports coaches are constantly developing game changing strategies to push the other team off balance. Putting in a football defense that shuts down the opponent’s passing game or using a full court basketball press to slow down a running team’s game can make the difference between winning and losing. In essence this new economy has become any business owner’s greatest coach.

The economic events of the past months have forced many companies to significantly alter their game. Flustered by changes to “business as usual” and paralyzed by doubt, companies are making poor decisions that are providing plenty of opportunities for their competition.

Albert Einstein may have said it best when he said, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

So, remember this game changing economy is an opportunity. You just need to pick up the fumbled football and run for the goal line.